Memorials, Ballet, and Cousins

Memorial Day weekend was a big, busy time for us!  Bud and KayKay came to visit, bringing Kinley and Kallen with them!  They were all here to see Reagan’s dance recital, just like last year!

Kinley, Reagan in her tap outfit, and Kallen
 

Ballerina beauties—Lily and Reagan
 

Kennedy and Reagan, after dinner at Calhoun’s on the River
 

S’more Time!
 

Me and KayKay
 

But the whole weekend wasn’t just about ballet and cousins!  It WAS Memorial Day weekend after all!  That means there needs to be some time spent honoring those who have given their lives for this country.  The boys had the privilege of participating in a Memorial activity that was truly special!  On Saturday morning, they went with Jim, Bud, and all the other scouts to place flags at the veteran’s cemetery.

God bless America!

Much Ado about May—Lots of small things lumped together

Woohoo!  I’m closing in on summer and catching up to the present day!

Here’s a shot Jim took of us on Mother’s Day, all eating dinner together on the patio.  Eating outside on the patio is one of our favorite things!  I’m so glad we were able to do it on Mother’s Day!



A few days later, the kids had field day at school, and I was able to run over there and see them for a little while.



After that the boys had their crossover ceremony at cub scouts where they were promoted to the next scout level.  I think that makes them Bears this upcoming year.



All the scouts had spent the last couple of weeks building rockets, and they blasted them off that same night.  I think they were much more excited about the rockets than the ceremony!

Here are the boys’ rockets (Thank, Uncle Clay!).  Never fear, Reagan had one too!
 

Thomas had a fancy two-stage rocket, so powerful it blasted all the way across the field and got stuck in a tree!
 

Jim went after it to try and get it down, but to no avail.  Sorry Thomas!
 

Clay and Carey and the cousins also came back in May for a quick visit one weekend.  The special occasion was the wedding of Jim and Clay’s good childhood friend, Jason!

Handsome Jasper boys!
 

A family affair—Jason, with his two kids, and Kelly, with her two kids
 

I was in charge of senior luncheon at school this year.  Here is a shot of The Foundry, minus all the kids.  Isn’t it beautiful!  Big thanks to The Foundry and Janine for helping make it a fantastic luncheon!
 

Red, white, and blue popsicles!
 

Fun times with Jake, John Pierce, and Avery (and their parents) Memorial Day evening
 

Spiderman strikes again!
 

Stopping a moment to take a picture outside our favorite Target!
 

Men on a mountaintop!
 

Jim, with Michael, Bryan, Graham, John, and Brian on Mt. Le Conte

I have one more thing to blog for May, but it’s big, so it will get its own post!

Camping and Cars—More Cub Scout Moments, April 2014

In addition to Easter, we also went camping in April, this time with the cub scouts at an official boy scout campground—Camp Pellissippi.  It was an overnight trip, made much easier by the fact that all the food was prepared for us by the camp workers.  Nice!

There were different activities through out the day. Above, the boys (and Reagan) got their own little cast iron skillet in which they made their own little biscuits in the fire below.

They also learned how to make an oven out of a cardboard box and went on a hike.  Not to mention they got to hang out with their scout friends and do a lot of running around and playing.

The view from our campsite

April was also the month of the district Pinewood Derby competition.  For background on this event see this previous post. We lucked out in that the boy who came in 1st overall couldn’t go to the district competition, so that scooted all the boys up a place, qualifying Jonathan to go.  So Jim took all the boys to the competition and raced their cars against those of all the other district winners. 

None of them won, but Jonathan came in 7th in the district, well ahead of his brothers, confirming our belief that he had the best car.  That made us all a little happier!

But here’s the funny part…

Here is Reagan with HER car and HER 1st place trophy!

What?

The district competition has a special division called the outlaw division.  ANYBODY can race a car in the outlaw division.  They do this so that siblings can participate (and daddies can go crazy tricking out cars), and Jim told the kids about it with the original thought that Jonathan could at least race his car in the outlaw division.  But of course, when Reagan heard about it, she wanted to make a car too!  So Jim helped her make a car, all red sparkles and pony stickers.

And he entered it in the outlaw division.  But it turned out that her car was the ONLY car entered in the outlaw division, so she won!  (They did race it against some randomly chosen cars, and it did beat them!)

So in the end, Reagan came away with the biggest trophy!

Easter Weekend 2014

Lots of family and friends came to visit on Easter weekend, so there were lots of pictures!  Enjoy!

Saturday: Crawfish Boil

The kids, trying to get the crawfish to latch onto their sticks

Ainsleigh has a little chat with PawPaw

Come on, Jonathan, try one!

He didn’t like it.

Part of the group—All in all, we had the six of us, PawPaw and NeNe, Clay and Carey and their three kids, Jason and Kelly and her two kids, and Josh and Cris and their two kids.  10 adults and 11 kids!

There were three shots of the kids taken that night, none of them great sadly.  Two were blurry and this one cut off Tyler’s head.  Oh, well.

Sunday: Easter morning

After church, we trooped up the path beside Pellissippi Parkway and took pictures by the beautiful flowering trees.  The spot was my idea, and I think it turned out pretty well, but the walk was longer than I thought it would be and brought out mare than a couple unhappy comments. 

Easter Egg Hunt

We had a great Easter weekend!  We hope you did too!